Taste the Rainbow
by blisterkissed
Summary: We are not defined by how society views us. Neither are they. Peeta, a perfect young woman with flour smeared all over her cheeks, and Katniss, an offbeat girl who most definitely will give 'em hell, don't care what other people think of them or their lesbian-bisexual girlfriendship. *Modern AU LGBTQ Everlark genderbend, for gay/queer pride*


_"I believe that a marriage isn't between a man and a woman, but between love and love." -Frank Ocean_

* * *

The two women stand on the dance floor with their arms around each other in the middle of the bar, listening to the music vibrate off the walls and reverberate against their skin, pressed together. The one with the dark hair sways her hips, one hand against the slender girl's back and the other tangled in her flaxseed hair that cascades down in messy waves. Her lips mouth words into the blonde woman's ear, singing the song that plays through the speakers in the musky room. The blonde woman has both arms secured around the taller one's waist, cradling her body and at the same time pulling her impossibly close to achieve the feeling of unity, totally inseparable from each other.

Even in the awkward silences between when one song stops and the other begins, they dance together as if they were the only people in the whole city, as if they had the whole world to themselves, moving to the music that generates within themselves from just the other woman's presence. Each hold their inamorata with such reverence and love that it exudes from their bodies in nearly tangible waves of energy: holy. Pure. Languid. Even with the gyrations, the salacious sheen of sweat clinging to breasts and foreheads, the hands and high-heeled feet that is to be expected of a Rabelaisian bar atmosphere such as this, the two women stand out in the crowd. A radius of charged atmosphere is left around them, where it is impossible for the other people in the dim-lit building to go without feeling uncomfortably out of place, sensing the intoxicating, tempestuous aura of the couple.

A spark is ignited between the two women, body to body, hand to hand, cheek to cheek, heart to heart. Flames burn through their veins instead of blood. There is heat. There is heat, and the two women continue to move on the dance floor unhurriedly.

And when the blonde presses her lips to the brunette's neck, the hollow just below her jaw, the air escapes the darker girl's lungs and she can't think. Her eyes shut. She sees flashes of deep, rich colors beneath her eyelids. And her hands find their way under her shirt, pressed flat, the crevice of the lean girl's spine humming against her palm. They are impassioned.

"I could dance forever with you, Katniss," the blonde whispers into her lover's neck, lips brushing against earthy skin. Her lover's arms encircle around her closer, fingers trailing against her bare body, raising familiar goosebumps in their wake, pressing the woman's hipbones into her own. Stomach against stomach, ribs against ribs, breasts against breasts, they are the same being. They fit together.

"I love you," the taller girl murmurs into her golden hair. "I love you, Peeta."

Katniss revels in the feeling of being held by the woman she loves, by the woman who loves her with all her soul, intoxicated by her scent, her laugh, her muscles, her freckles. She's hooked. She finds paradise when she is with her.

Not in specifically gay bar, the couple draws attention from various partygoers, some curious, some lewd, some disgusted. Their open display of affection perturbs some people, due to either the uncommonness of their seeing two women together, or their paranoid fear and hatred of the fairly-new evolution of society. The two tend to frequent the gay clubs around town, the ones where sexualization and judgement can be avoided, but the conversation that passed between the two women only hours before demanded a change of scene. _I don't want to go to a gay bar again. That would be... what? The fourth time in a row? _Katniss complained._ I just want to go to a bar, a normal bar, where everything is normal. If there are designated gay bars, then why aren't there designated straight bars?_ Peeta scratched her forehead thinking of a suitable response. _Every bar is a straight bar, Katniss. For now we're the minority, and we just have to take that in stride._ Katniss cuts her off, holding Peeta's shoulders, her fingers angular. _I'm tired of people telling us that we are unnatural, wrong. We're not. Screw them, screw all of them!_ Peeta reached up and overlapped her long fingers with Katniss's. There was a long silence between the two while they simply stared into each other's eyes, one waiting to hear what the other would say, and the other mulling over what had just been said. Then a smirk played upon her mouth as she said, _Let's go break the rules of nature_, satirizing homophobia. So here the two are, holding each other in the middle of a sea of heterosexuality. They disregard the frowns directed at them and the not-as-inconspicuous-as-they-had-thought pointing. The young women's hearts dance together as their feet do, in the sex-saturated room, ignoring everything but themselves. Their pulses mimic their eyes as they flit over each others faces, a gentle smirk resting on Peeta's perfect pink lips. Fingers intertwine with fingers, arms raise into the air, a victory stance in celebration of _them_, thumbs brush, tongues flick out to wet lips. And there is always eye contact, heated and so alive.

Power runs between the two, around their ankles like a brisk autumn breeze, swirling up the leaves of morning kisses, coffee breath, Friday pizza nights, slow dancing in the middle of the street, drinking hot chocolate out of wine glasses, sharing mittens on cold winter days.

The smiles that play upon their lips could make flowers grow.

Peeta draws back from their embrace slightly to run a hand through her honey tresses, still crimped slightly from the braid she had it in the night before, further exaggerating their natural waves. Her hair frames her thin, delicate face and falls past her broad shoulders, toned arms, down to her narrow waist. The loose-fitting top she wears right now covers the strong muscle of her shoulders, back, arms, that she developed through years of hauling bags of flour and crates around the bakery that she owns. Peeta flutters her fingers quickly as they run through her hair, trying to untangle a knot at the bottom, and scrunches her face. A laugh rumbles in Katniss's chest as she places a small kiss on her wrinkled nose.

Neither of them usually wear makeup, but Peeta's bright blue eyes stand out even without eyeliner or mascara or eyeshadow, or any of that paint the majority of women sport. She doesn't need it, though. Not to Katniss, not to anyone. Peeta's eyes hypnotize the people she speaks to, rimmed with thick eyelashes that somehow make them even more distinctive. And when she smiles at you, this quality of her is awoken that makes it unthinkable to hate her; Katniss swears that at least five guys she passes on the street every day fall for her, just from simply flashing her teeth at them._ It really is too bad you're gay,_ Katniss would joke. _'Cause you've got those guys hook, line, and sinker._

_They don't even have a chance, _Peeta would reply, pulling her girlfriend close and rubbing her arm up and down casually._ Especially when they're competing against you._

The best thing is that with Peeta, her smiles are always genuine. She's the kind of girl who doesn't even have a clue about how much she means to people. Peeta smiles and leaves everyone in her wake feeling happy, leading a better day because they know that she sincerely cares about those around her. Optimism, compassion, generosity. Katniss can never wrap her mind around why such a perfect girl as Peeta would want to be with such an ordinary, even sub par, girl as her. It is astounding, mind blowing, a miracle. Before Peeta, Katniss hadn't even put it together that she was different from all the other girls around her. Peeta had been there for her when Katniss was racking her brain for reasons as to why she could possibly have possessed romantic feelings for all her previous boyfriends and still had the capacity to love Peeta, a remarkable person,_ but a girl_. She helped her cope with the fact that maybe some people wouldn't like her, who she was, who she chose to love. Peeta was patient with her. Most of all, she was the catalyst that helped her come to terms, and learn to feel pride in who she is.

To some, a girl kissing a girl would be weird. Possibly cringe-worthy. Wrong. So wrong that they would be aware of it throughout the whole thing. But to Katniss, kissing Peeta is no different from kissing any other person on the planet. (Other than, of course, that the feeling it gave her made her feel so fucking content with everything in her life.) Kissing is just kissing. A person's gender doesn't matter any more than a person's hair color. If Katniss love a girl, then she loves a girl and that's that, and her sex isn't some alienating factor in the relationship that is ever-present, like an elephant in the room. And that's something that most binary people don't understand. To Katniss, to Peeta, queer is normal.

It's not "queer," with emphasis. It's "me." Who they love doesn't change who they are in the sense that most people give it. Homosexuality is not a different race, bisexuality is not a different race.

It's just that most straight people treat them as if they are, separating sexualities strictly into us-and-them boxes.

Peeta tilts her head and plants a soft kiss on Katniss's lips.

"I love you," she whispers back, her voice cracking in the middle of the sentence, leaving her chuckling as her warm breath mingles with Katniss's. "And I particularly love you in that dress," she murmurs into the hollow of her neck.

"You always say that," Katniss smirks as Peeta slips her slender hands into the craftily hidden pockets inside the folds of Katniss's (short but) loose dress. The back dips low down her back, and the emerald green fabric has a teardrop shaped cutout on the bust of its high-cut front. As her girlfriend moves, Katniss gets a whiff of her scent, her trademark Peeta smell: the rich, wholesome scent of flour and a certain delicate aroma that reminds Katniss of spring flowers. She breathes in deeply, filling her lungs to their complete capacity, not wanting to have it be replaced with the sticky-feeling scent of the bar. (And also, admittedly, getting her fill of eau de Peeta. She might be slightly addicted. Once the two girls' relationship became serious enough to begin living with each other, Katniss started a habit of stealing Peeta's pillow, still able to sleep in when her girlfriend wakes up in the morning to start the bread and let it rise before the early bakery hours. Luckily, she never minds since it always ends up smelling like Katniss in the end.) Katniss moves her arms down to meet Peeta's, rubbing circles with her thumbs over her bare wrists.

"Only because it's always true." How matter-of-fact. Always, indeed. "I'm going to go get some beer. Want me to grab you an ippa?" Peeta asks, her nose wrinkling slightly as she eyes the less-than-modest movements of their surrounding company.

"Yeah, sure. Thanks, P." Katniss presses a quick kiss to her knuckles as she draws her hands out of her pockets and goes to wait by a corner booth as the golden-headed girl's hips sway lightly all the way over to the counter, where the bartender runs back and forth from the cooler to the taps. Once when they were at a nightclub a few years ago, right when they had begun to go out with each other, the two had overheard a young girl asking the friend she had come with what "an ippa" was. Of course, the chicken scratch on the chalkboard stationed on the wall above the counter read "IPA." Katniss and Peeta laughed so hard at the naivete of the girl, and her obvious novice-status at bars, that their middles were sore for the next two days. Being an Indian Pale Ale connoisseur herself, Katniss had found that extra-hilarious, and ever since then _ippa_ has been an inside joke between the two. It's gotten so common for them to just let it roll off their tongues that sometimes they forget that's not what everyone else calls IPAs, and they look just as dumb as the probably just-turned-21 year old girl from the baby years of their relationship together.

A young man brushes past Katniss and the corners of her lips drag down, his shoulder bumping abruptly against hers.

"Dyke," he mutters maliciously, just under his breath enough for it to go unnoticed by those around them, but loud enough for Katniss to hear him clearly. The jolt unnerved her and she clenched her fists, shoving them back deep into her pockets to keep from acting out in a way that very well could get her and her girlfriend kicked out of the bar.

_Bigot,_ she muses about calling back, mocking him. _Watch out, I might endanger your family values. Don't get too close, it's contagious!_ She does not say anything though, reminded of her determination to let the hate roll off her like the heat of midsummer. (And also Peeta's insistence to take the high road. Be the better man- metaphorically, of course.) So she lets the man walk away with his big ignorant ego, thinking he righted the world of another wrong.

Only a handful of seconds later, Peeta comes back with her seasonal pumpkin ale and Katniss's IPA.

"I got one homophobe over here. You?"

"I was honored to be the recipient of various glares and one stool-scoot away from me," she brushes a stray strand of gossamer hair out of her face and flciks her eyes over to her girlfriend for a brief moment.

"I had the pleasure of hearing yet another completely original gay slur," Katniss states as she puts the bottle to her lips.

"I think I win this time," Peeta mumbles.

And the two young women lean up against the booth people watching, one hand holding their chilled, deep brown tinted glass bottles and the other holding each others, fingers intertwined and thumbs casually running against against their skin, against each other. They clink the hips of their beer bottles together and exchange a quick smile before they begin pointing subtly and making up humorous conversations between scantily-clad women and their male rubbing posts. Sneaking a glance at her inamorata, Peeta has a hard time swallowing as her cheeks refuse to stop grinning, her lips pulled tight in a broad smile around the mouth of the thick glass.


End file.
